With the growth of information products such as notebooks, monitors, cell phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs), the requiring quantities of panels increase dramatically. It's estimated that optoelectronic industry will become an important and potential industry after semiconductor development.
LCD manufacture is divided into three processes: (1) array process; (2) panel process; and (3) module process. The array process is mainly comprised of forming a plurality of transistors on a first glass substrate by using steps similar to those of fabricating a semiconductor device. These steps include plating, exposure, development and etching etc. The first glass substrate with the transistors being fabricated thereon is defined as a transistor substrate. A black matrix and red, green, and blue color filters are then deposited and patterned on a second glass substrate to form a color filter substrate. The panel process is coating a polyimide material on the transistor substrate and the color filter substrate individually. Then the transistor substrate and the color filter substrate are joined with an adhesive seal material. Before sealing the two substrates, spacers are deposited to maintain a precise gap between two surfaces of the substrates. The substrates are aligned and laminated using heat and pressure. Liquid crystal material is then injected into the small space between the substrates. Next, polarizers are attached to outsides of the transistor substrate and the color filter substrate for forming a display cell. The cell is then cut to optimal-sized panels. The module process is assembling the panel, driver ICs, circuit boards, a backlight unit and a plastic cover to create a liquid crystal display module (LCM).
In the panel process, the cutting step of the substrates is performed in a scribing station. Please refer to FIG. 1. This figure shows a top plan view of the scribing station arrangement. The scribing station indicated at 30 is usually a dust-free room. When the substrate assembly (not shown herein) is delivered to the scribing station 30, an operator 38 who stands in an operating area 36 uses a breaking machine 32 or a scribing machine 34 to cut the substrate assembly.
It's noted that the operator 38 generally put on a conductive clothes, conductive gloves, conductive shoes and a wrist strap to drain electrostatic charge accumulated on the operator 38 for preventing LCD devices from being seriously damaged by the electrostatic charge. However, glass particles produced from the process of glass substrate scribing fall onto the raised floor. This result leads to the operator 38 directly step on the glass particles and the electrostatic discharge ability of the conductive shoes is obviously lowered.
Fragile electronic components, such as integrated circuits, and other components frequently mounted on circuit boards are readily susceptible and damaged due to the electrostatic charge accumulated on the operator. At the time this occurs, if the operator 38 is charged with high voltage of electrostatic charge and if the electrical component is susceptible to be damaged from such high voltage, the electronic components may be completely or partially impaired, even though very little current passes through the device.
Based on the above descriptions, how to solve these problems is becoming an important and essential subject in the optoelectronic field.